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Adverse possession

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kaylynne

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? California

Twenty-five years ago I bought a rural, adobe home with the understandable assumption that everything within the fence was part of the two - plus acre hillside canyon property that I had just purchased. After a few years, I learned there was a thirty-foot wide parcel within my fence-line that I did not own. Nonetheless, in the decades since then I have continued to openly maintain the property as if it belonged to me behind the fence and locked gates.

Developers who have just purchased the thirty-foot wide parcel with another non-adjoining 300 acres know about the parcel and would now like me to "give it up." Since I originally thought I paid for the land, and it has been part of my secluded and very private property for decades, I don't want to relinquish it.

They have not only declined my offer to purchase it, they want me to grant them an easement over a small portion of my property so that the thirty-foot wide parcel will join up with the rest of their 300 acres and provide a roadway to a sixty-house development! They already have a twenty foot easement across my next door neighbor's property which is not wide enough to meet the county's 35' - 60' road requirements for their proposed development. They need their own thirty-foot parcel plus some of my land combined with the easement across my neighbor’s land to meet those road requirements. (They already have considerable road frontage at the other end of their proposed development, but said grading through the hillside to the back portion of the development behind my house would be exorbitantly expensive.) Such a road through our yards would seriously diminish the rural lifestyle we have enjoyed for decades.

They hinted if I did not cooperate, leaving the thirty-foot wide parcel useless to them, they would bulldoze it out of spite.

I understand to file for adverse possession in California I need to have paid five years worth of property taxes on the parcel in question. Since, I have not previously paid the property taxes on the small parcel, if I send a payment now that covers the last five years, will that meet the requirement, or would it be a safer bet to ask for exclusive prescriptive rights, or am I just out of luck?
 
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BelizeBreeze

Senior Member
California only requires that you possess the land and pay the taxes for five years. It does NOT say that you must pay the taxes for the five years previous to filing.

(1) possession by actual occupation under circumstances sufficient to constitute reasonable notice to the owner's title;
(2) possession hostile to the owner's title; (3) possession whereby the holder claims the property as his own under either color of title or claim of right;
(4) continuous and uninterrupted possession for five years;
(5) the holder has paid all taxes levied on the property during those five years.

Get thee immediately to a real estate attorney.
 
S

seniorjudge

Guest
BelizeBreeze said:
California only requires that you possess the land and pay the taxes for five years. It does NOT say that you must pay the taxes for the five years previous to filing.

(1) possession by actual occupation under circumstances sufficient to constitute reasonable notice to the owner's title;
(2) possession hostile to the owner's title; (3) possession whereby the holder claims the property as his own under either color of title or claim of right;
(4) continuous and uninterrupted possession for five years;
(5) the holder has paid all taxes levied on the property during those five years.

Get thee immediately to a real estate attorney.
Her fence is made of gold....
 

shortbus

Member
You have a good claim one way or the other. See an attorney.

Problem for your adverse possession claim is someone else may have been paying the taxes already, so you can't necessarily just send in a payment.

But even without the taxes, you can argue you have an exclusive easement to use the surface of the land, which is almost as good as ownership.
 

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